Raghuram Kothakota writes, "Until now OVM Server for SPARC Direct I/O and SR-IOV features were limited to PCIe buses assigned to the primary domain only. This restriction is now removed with the release of OVM Server for SPARC 3.1. That is, now you can assign a PCIe bus to a logical domain and then assign PCIe slots or SR-IOV Virtual Functions from that PCIe bus to other domains. This opens up many different creative opportunities. For example it enables configuration such as below:..."

"Misys is a leading financial software vendor, providing the broadest portfolio of banking, treasury, trading and risk solutions available on the market," writes Frederic Pariente. "At ISV Engineering, we have a long-standing collaboration with the Kondor+ product line, that came from the Turaz acquisition (formerly part of Thomson Reuters) and now part of the Misys Treasury & Capital Markets (TCM) portfolio. Jean-Marc Jacquot, Senior Technical Consultant at Misys TCM, was recently interviewed by ITplace.TV (in French language) about a recent IT redesign of the Kondor+ installed base at a major French financial institution..."

Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.1
Provides a new level of functional capability, representing the continued investment and enhancement of this flexible and powerful virtualization capability

Jeff Savit writes, "A new release of Oracle VM Server for SPARC has been released with performance improvements and enhanced operational flexibility. The details are described in the formal documentation and in other blogs, but here are some highlights:

...
Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.1 provides a new level of functional capability, representing the continued investment and enhancement of this flexible and powerful virtualization capability. For more information, please see the Virtualization Blog announcement at Announcing Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.1 Release and the What's New in Oracle VM Server for SPARC Software page..."

This is a maintenance release containing bug fixes. For the full list of fixes see the ChangeLog, or just simply download it now at the community or Oracle download sites.

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

"In the modern data center, storage system upgrades are rarely caused by a storage system running out of capacity; rather, it more often occurs due to an unanticipated lack of performance or exorbitant maintenance prices. In fact, performance related upgrades can occur at any time, often well before the current storage system was due to be refreshed and more importantly before the evaluation process had predicted a refresh would be needed..."

"The cost of storage is important in all data-dependent companies, but in hyper-scale environments like web-based enterprises, it can literally consume the business. With the simultaneous requirements of scalable capacity, reliability and availability, these organizations face serious challenges with storage economics. RAID and replication are the architectures that have historically been used in large storage systems but object storage is being tapped as an alternative that can offer a compelling TCO advantage..."

"The use of cloud-based storage has increased 90 percent from January 2012 to June of this year, according to 'The 2013 State of the Enterprise Cloud Report' from Verizon, and the use of cloud-based memory has doubled, driven by the shift of business-critical applications to the cloud..."

"Fenway Park was struggling. Nearly a century's worth of history and the undying love of fans couldn't change the fact that this once state-of-the-art stadium could no longer keep pace in a drastically different world.

Its owners had to make a difficult decision: Stick with what's known or start again. The answer was found somewhere in the middle. They didn't to do away with a place that so many love, but they didn't sit still, either. Enhancements were made both inside and out, resulting in a stadium that manages to be historic and modern with the same heartbeat..."

"When it comes to developing the next generation of technology, the biggest bottleneck is arguably the battery. Engineers need better batteries for electric vehicles, for energy storage in power grids and, of course, for consumer electronic devices.

These batteries need to deliver a higher current over more discharge cycles with a greater energy density, to name just a few of the challenges.

Building and testing new battery designs is time-consuming, difficult and expensive. So it is handy for electrochemists to simulate the way a battery performs before they ever get their hands dirty..."

"With each season, the NFL continues to incorporate new technology that could change every aspect of the game. From research on player safety to improved in-stadium experience for fans, NFL teams are committing more money to new technology seemingly every day..."

Karoly Vegh writes, "This post is about the third option, a container technology built right into Solaris: Solaris Zones. They are pretty awesome, especially on Solaris 11 - they're like vacation: once you go Zones, you won't want to leave them :)
But what exactly makes Zones so cool?

There are a number of reasons, allow me to list my favourite top 10:..."

The following sections provide an overview of the technology, describe common use cases, and provide instructions for installing and configuring the tools in Oracle Linux. Several examples show how the tools can be used to capture and report important hardware information you can use in your daily operations..."

"IaaS plays like Amazon EC2 mainly provide a way for you to do what you're already doing for a little less money. PaaS and SaaS deliver a lot more...

I've been surprised at the way fairly traditional companies have embraced the cloud -- but don't always embrace the benefits. For most, the payoff has been relatively small and confined to the infrastructure layer..."

"Cloud providers have attracted enterprise customers with the promise of rapid elasticity, on-demand provisioning, high availability and a pennies-per-hour pricing model. But there's just one problem: These very qualities have enticed criminals to adopt cloud services as well.

When a scam artist is looking to set up a phishing scheme to gain access to victims' bank accounts, the built-in redundancy, scalability and automation capabilities of cloud servers are extremely appealing. And when all it takes to procure cloud services is a working credit card -- without ever needing to deal with a live salesperson -- the cloud becomes an even more viable base from which criminals can commit fraud..."

"Online file locker services that, like Rapidshare, have a business model that provides an incentive to share copyright protected materials must monitor incoming links to discover infringing files, the German Federal Court of Justice has ruled.

The ruling concerned a dispute between German copyright collecting society Gema and filesharing site Rapidshare. In 2009, Gema sued Rapidshare in Germany, alleging that over 4,800 music files for which it represented the copyright holders were shared via Rapidshare without consent from Gema or the artist..."

"Don't let healthy skepticism around the cloud blind you to its core value...

In an article in Midsize Insider, an IBM-sponsored publication, there is some gentle pushback on the concept of cloud computing: 'For scalability or elasticity, the cloud reigns supreme, but for businesses that have outgrown the need for constantly shifting IT power, it may not always be the most economical option. As Wired points out, once a company can accurately predict its computing needs, buying hardware at a discount often contrasts advantageously with a public cloud solution for reasons of economy'..."

"There are cool things on the horizon for The Cloud. The Cloud is the
clearinghouse for all things you access on your enabled device that isn't
saved to that device, a memory stick or disk. It evolves as people and
businesses rely more heavily on it, for everything from storage of summer
camp photos to intricate predictive software for huge corporations. The
Cloud is just... out there. Even if you don't know much about it, you've
probably used it to: ..."

"Although the use of cloud services is growing faster than the overall enterprise IT market, it is still a small part of overall IT spending, according to Gartner.

A recent Gartner survey on the future of IT services found that only 38 percent of all organizations surveyed indicate cloud services use today. However, 80 percent of organizations said that they intend to use cloud services in some form within 12 months, including 55 percent of the organizations not doing so today..."

"A multitude of computer security defenses simply don't work. And the one we need doesn't exist.

The security defense we need is one that basically puts a security expert on each computer. Most of the computer security experts I know have never been infected. For example, I've been practicing computer security since 1987, and I've had my personal computers compromised only three times: once by the Cascade virus in the late 1980s, once by a GDI-related zero-day exploit, and once two or three years ago by unpatched Java. In each case, I knew I was compromised in seconds and was able to avoid any real damage..."

"More businesses are swapping out their traditional IT infrastructure for cloud services that offer faster deployments, lower upfront costs and reduced maintenance. But enterprise IT professionals panicking about their jobs getting outsourced to cloud service providers are likely to feel threatened.

The more application- or role-specific IT roles are within an enterprise, the better the chance that cloud services could edge out an IT position, said James Staten, vice president and principal analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc..."

"A rapidly changing legal landscape is making the application, interview
and screening processes increasingly complicated - and potentially
dangerous for employers, which includes staffing firms and may also
include recruiters working on a client search.

Here are the top five legal hazards in hiring and background screening that turned up during the first half of 2013:..."

"On a busy day, anywhere from 2,500 to 3,000 people will stop into a TopGolf venue to have a tee-off, grab a bite to eat and enjoy some music or the big game on TV. And the happiness of every one of those thousands of people in some way depends on CIO Tom LaPlante.

TopGolf isn't a run-of-the-mill driving range; it's a tech-enabled competitive golf "entertainment experience." The field of play, so to speak, is like a giant dartboard spread out over 200 yards; 500 unique sensor-equipped targets keep score on each microchipped golf ball by tracking its distance and accuracy..."

"At first glance, the roles of CIO and CMO could not be more different. But now more than ever, organizations' chief information officers and chief marketing officers must rely on each other to do their jobs more effectively. Here are five lessons CIOs can teach CMOs -- and five more that marketing execs can teach their C-level tech peers..."

"To keep your company competitive, you need to hire bright young talent. And to hire bright young talent, your company has to be competitive -- especially when it comes to technology. When deciding which job offer to accept, millennials place a lot of weight on a company's IT posture. Here are 10 things IT professionals can do to attract Generation Y to the business..."

"The Department of Energy was hacked. Again. It is the second time this year that the DOE was the victim of a breach. The breach took place in, and it is believed that the personally identifiable information (PII) of 14,000 present and former employees was potentially compromised...

After a breach, DiBello added, an organization should take the time to learn what happened, and leverage the lessons learned to improve their systems. Otherwise, they may leave themselves vulnerable to another, similar attack. So DiBello provided the following tips on how to best manage breaches like this:"

"Since 1921, every year the crown has been perched atop the head of a new Miss America. Despite the many changes in our society since the pageant started, gathering around the television to watch the Miss America pageant has remained a tradition.

If you think about it, the format of the pageant sounds familiar.

A lot of talented candidates all vying for the same position. The women with the best special talents move onto the next phase of the competition. There are a few interviews; sometimes the candidates get stumped on the answers. And finally a winner is crowned who best represents the Miss America brand...

"Much of today's talk is about youth ruling development and IT. Sure, there are a lot of eager, bright young people in tech, and most of them like to think that they "rule," but the truth is we oldsters still run the show.

Why? Because hard-earned lessons provide the wisdom to distinguish fantasy from reality, and the determination to do what's necessary, not just what's fun or cool.

As a green programmer, I thought that coding was everything, that people were annoying and clueless, and that all my bosses had my back and would take care of me so I could just focus on the bits and be happy.

Boy, was I wrong.

Here are 10 things I wish I knew as an IT newbie..."

They're called 'fundamentals' for a reason

Marketing is not evil

Learn the difference between opportunity and distraction

If you don't have a contract, you don't have a job

MBAs know what's best -- for themselves, not for you

Recognize the patterns before they bite you

Relational database normalization will teach you clarity and economy of thought

"From a personal-development perspective, you should consider work meetings as the proving ground equivalent of your schoolyard playground. There are certain do's and don'ts. And, if you're clueless about which is which, then you'll likely make an unfortunate - and lasting -impression. In other words, there's a fine line between right and wrong here..."

"The devastating triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown
which struck Japan in March 2011, has led many IT managers to rebuild
their infrastructure with a key focus on disaster recovery and business
continuity, according to experts.

It's an effort which has had obvious knock-on benefits for cloud
computing, virtualisation and mobile vendors touting their wares in the
land of the rising sun but also teaches some important lessons about IT
best practice..."

"I loved my v6 wave diagram. It made perfect analytic sense to me; anyone could see this is how the market would adopt IPv6. The crest of the wave starts over the Investigation phase of IPv6 and then over time flows over Research, Trial and then Deployment - the sequential stages of IPv6 adoption. I held tightly to this diagram for as long as I could but Serge hated it. As we were walking out of our third pitch meeting of the day on Sand Hill Road he turned toward me and ordered that I remove it from the deck. 'Too complicated for VCs to understand,' he said..."

"A huge shift is taking place in the complexity and composition of today's enterprise communications. What was once fairly straightforward - fixed phone and data connections - has evolved to include large data pipes, a plethora of mobile connections, laptops, smartphones, tablets, machines, telematics, cloud services and more. Each of these 'connection points' has helped enterprises interact more effectively - with customers, users, and other devices - but has also added to the complexity of an already intricate infrastructure. Increased end-user adoption and improvements in productivity might increase, but so do the levels of risk and responsibility..."

"It's no surprise that emerging networking technologies are fueling the need for higher-speed connections. But as the network is upgraded, network security tools must become more advanced, too.

Enterprise networking has grown convoluted as new kinds of network traffic -- such as video and big data -- begin to travel through organizations' networks. At the same time, developing trends, like software-defined networking (SDN), are demanding enterprises refresh every moving part of their IT infrastructure, according to a recent survey of enterprise IT buyers from Campbell, Calif.-based Infonetics Research Inc..."

"Many enterprises use OSPF version 2 for their internal IPv4 routing protocol. OSPF has gone through changes over the years and the protocol has been adapted to work with IPv6. As organizations start to contemplate how they will deploy IPv6 at their Internet perimeters and within their enterprise networks they should be aware of OSPF version 3 and how it differs from what they are familiar with. This article reviews the differences between OSPF version 2 and OSPF version 3 and how they can be configured to work with IPv4, IPv6 and both protocols..."

"At the BCS CMSG conference in London earlier this year, Unisys CM manager
Michel Delran spoke about how to design and implement a successful
configuration management process and how a configuration management
database can save you millions.

He began with the real-life cautionary tale of a phone company which
lost millions as a result of paying too little attention to configuration
management.

Just before Christmas one year there was a fire in one of the phone
company's smaller data centres. Initially no one thought it important
but this small fire resulted in an £8m loss of sales as the data centre
contained the one server that was responsible for processing company's
Chip and PIN information on credit card purchases across Europe..."

"When it comes to security, ROI or return on investment has historically
been difficult to measure. It's a bit like that bar receipt from Las
Vegas that you don't want to bring up around management because it's
hard to defend..."

"There's been a lot of talk lately about the value of sandbox technology as part of a cybersecurity defense. While sandboxes are a valuable tool in the hands of a cybersecurity team to identify and analyze malware and other sophisticated threats, the actual value depends on how well you know how to use it.

To help CISOs and other cybersecurity executives, here are five ways to help you get more out of your sandbox, as detailed by ThreatTrack Security's Anthony Arrington..."

"In the light of unprecedented attacks by cybercriminals against
businesses that span every industry, this question has come to the fore:
Is it time to fight back?

As the Founder and CEO of Wisegate, a private, expert peer group
for senior-level IT executives, I get to work with some of IT's best
and brightest security professionals and have a ringside seat to the
discussions that unfold.

Wisegate member Jeff Bardin, Chief Intel Officer at Treadstone 71,
says 'hacker groups and disruption of business has reached an all-time
high and no longer can be ignored. We want to get the 'adversary' to
understand that if they launch an attack against a company, there will
be costs to pay.'..."

"Increasingly lengthy and complex log-in processes and web forms are driving consumers away from websites, according to Ping Identity.

The study revealed that an overwhelming 80% of consumers had locked themselves out of websites because they couldn't remember their log-in details.

This is hardly surprising as nearly a quarter (24%) of respondents had log-ins for up to five websites, while an equal number juggled six to ten websites and almost a third (30%) face the logistical feat of remembering log-ins for between 11 and 20 websites. As a result of this 'password amnesia', nearly 50% of consumers have had to re-set a password, with over a fifth (21%) having to do so on a regular basis..."

"One of my favorite episodes of Friends shows Chandler checking his email
on Ross's laptop. Suddenly, Chandler's face goes blank and he begins
pounding his fingers on random keys, muttering, 'Oh no, oh no.' He
admitted to opening an email from someone he didn't know because it
promised naked pictures of Anna Kournikova. If you are over the age of
20, you may remember that the Anna Kournikova virus, spread via an email
encouraging the recipient to check out the pictures of the beautiful
tennis star..."

"Have you ever walked into your office after a nice, relaxing weekend to find an article ripped out of an airline magazine sitting on your chair? You know, the article that talks about small-business fraud and how it's now an epidemic. A few vendors are quoted in there fanning the flames of FUD, talking about how vulnerable business are, and an analyst or two appear in their Chicken Little suits. Yeah, that's a lot of fun -- but it gets better. Then you read the sticky note on it that says: 'Hey, saw this on my flight. What are we doing about this? Let's talk. Signed, CEO'..."

Lauded long ago as a miracle pill for security operations, intrusion prevention systems (IPS) have been there and back again along the hype cycle curve. Now, as next-generation IPS (NGIPS) products are being put through their paces in real-world IT environments, the question is whether IPS will maintain its relevance in the enterprise or fade away as organizations put less emphasis on perimeter security and look to bundle similar feature in unified threat management and next-generation firewall deployments.

"One of the most common reasons business owners and IT managers ask me for help shoring up their organizations' password procedures is because of the confusing and often-changing requirements of the industry and government regulations to which their organizations must comply. It makes sense they would want to make sure their password policies are 100 percent in line with their compliance obligations. Running afoul of industry or government regulations is one of the more costly and embarrassing things that could happen to a business. When this happens, losses come in the form of fines and legal fees, as well as bad publicity and loss of customer confidence..."

"Lots of security vendors play in the identity space. IBM is a leader
in both areas while McAfee, RSA Security, and Symantec have acquired
identity technologies over the past few years.

These vendors present a compelling vision of tighter alignment between
identity and security that is sometimes referred to as 'contextual
security.' By unifying identity, network security, device identity, and
data security, CISOs can create and enforce granular access policies that
focus on what's most important: sensitive data, profitable transactions,
and valuable IT assets..."

"In the first Industry Insight in this four-part series on how to make the most of a company's virtual environment, I looked at the problem of virtual machine (VM) sprawl: how proliferating zombie VMs can tie up resources and cancel the benefits of virtualising in the first place.
In this Industry Insight, I consider another problem that undermines the business case for virtualising: misallocation and over-allocation of system resources..."

Join Oracle storage executives as we introduce Oracle's next-generation Application Engineered Storage solutions, the only storage co-engineered to work with Oracle Database and Oracle Applications. Get ready to meet our newest storage products that can help your enterprise increase application performance, while reducing sprawl and complexity.

Attend the Webcast to learn about how Oracle's Application Engineered Storage:

It's an exciting time in the database world. We're casting aside the relational database management system shackles for NoSQL (and "NewSQL," but I'll just use NoSQL as a term for both) systems that let us achieve better availability and scalability by relaxing data consistency requirements. That is, NoSQL systems are built to scale horizontally -- so you can run lots and lots of different servers, minimizing the impact of any of them going down -- and to handle the complexities that arise when you spread data across lots of servers..."

"When malware strikes, the impact on data can be disastrous. And to make
matters worse, there's no guarantee of getting that valuable information
back. Only 39 percent were able to retrieve all the data they lost in a
malware attack, according to a summer 2013 survey by B2B International
and Kaspersky Lab. 61 percent lost at least some of their information
forever..."

Open Server Summit, a leading Silicon Valley conference for the server industry, announces that this year's meeting will join forces with the OpenStorage Summit presented by Nexenta. The combined Summits will be held at the Santa Clara Convention Center from October 22-24, 2013.

The expanded format will offer attendees exposure to both tracks of Summit content, expanding the breadth of the Open Architecture in the Server Industry to include for the first time in-depth insight into OpenStorage. Dr. Lance Levanthal, Open Server Summit Chairperson, said, "The joint event further cements our dedication to serve the needs of a global audience focused on open design initiatives in the server industry."

"Just how that relationship will shake out depends on how CIOs approach the problem of big data and business intelligence (BI). Jennifer Zeszut, former CEO and co-founder of innovative social media monitoring specialist Scout Labs (acquired by Lithium Technologies in 2010), and current CEO and co-founder of Beckon, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering for gaining insight from marketing data, says most IT departments have a flawed approach to big data and BI that forces smart CMOs to seek alternatives..."

"The rarified world of predictive analytics is becoming more mainstream as the types of companies using it and the variety of tools available grows.

Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of disciplines such as statistics, mathematical modeling, machine learning, and data mining to help companies answer the age-old question "what's going to happen?"

The growth of predictive analytics is being driven by big data and new sources of consumer information such as web activity, e-mail, social and mobile media data. Rather than just looking at past performance, predictive models seek out esoteric data patterns and perform calculations during live transactions..."

"Banks have long struggled to make sense of the reams of customer data they collect across product lines. The rise of mobile banking is making this task even harder.

The industry now has a litany of new data points to process. How many customers interact with their bank via the web browser on the mobile devices compared to those who use an app? How frequently do customers log into a bank account through their smartphones? How much time do they spend there? Are consumers completing the tasks they set out to do on their mobile phones or tablets, or are they giving up in frustration?..."

"Despite concerns over data loss, security experts and consultants say that not all companies are savvy when it comes to company risks concerning information loss.

The way companies set policies and governance around bring your own device (BYOD) use, the cloud, data sharing and other issues is critical to avoiding the loss of data and thousands -- or possibly millions -- of dollars.

Companies must establish data loss prevention strategies to protect their business. It's not enough for them to implement disaster recovery practices alone; they need to take proactive steps..."

"IT managers turn to mobile device management to protect corporate assets, but MDM tools might not provide the protection that IT pros are counting on.

Mobile device management (MDM) software helps reduce some of the risks associated with mobile devices in the enterprise, such as corporate data leaks and mobile malware infecting the network. But relying on MDM tools alone to secure smartphones and tablets is like assuming a house with a smoke alarm can't catch fire..."

"Earlier this summer, Aaron Rhodes of Neohapsis talked to CSO about five things to consider when developing mobile security policies. Today, moving that discussion forward, Pankaj Gupta of Amtel talks to us about five myths in mobile security.

In business both large and small, mobile devices are being used to access mission-critical data that must be protected. As mentioned in our previous article, mobile is the new endpoint when it comes to security..."

"We spend our lives doing things. It doesn't matter whether we're at work or home. We've quickly moved to mobile devices to help make our lives (ostensibly) easier and more productive. Not that we've really succeeded: We've just changed the use case.

You used to listen to the radio when you were driving; if you got bored, you'd put in a tape or CD. Now you make a phone call and conduct business, or maybe it's a chance to keep in touch with Mom. You used to sit down and do your homework and maybe have some music on; now you still have your music, but Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook continuously ping in the background. What started out as a productivity tool very quickly becomes a device of distraction..."

"Businesses coping with security issues stemming from employee use of personal devices for company work are only experiencing what universities have grappled with for years.

"Many of us in higher ed find it very funny when we see how BYOD has dominated so much of the security press lately," Mike Corn, chief privacy and security officer at the University of Illinois (UI) at Urbana-Champaign, said in an interview. "We view that with amusement because Bring Your Own Device has defined our environment almost since the beginning of personal computing."

The magnitude of BYOD at a university the size of UI would likely give a corporate security administrator fits. Not only is there a large annual turnover rate -- some 10,000 new students arrive on campus each year -- but each has an average of 3.5 personal devices in tow..."

"In a SearchCIO tweet jam recap, participants suggested current trends toward bring your own technology would continue to offer unique opportunities for enterprise IT departments, but also raise new management headaches. Their predictions shed some light on future IT trends, and we followed up by polling our readers, "Are BYOD policies a major concern for CIOs or a fizzling priority?"

"The BYOD trend began with mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, and in most organizations these are the only types of devices included in a BYOD program. A range of recent announcement and trends, however, have begun to shine a spotlight on the on the idea of extending BYOD to include BYO-PC and BYO-Mac options..."

"Netscape co-founder and prominent tech investor Marc Andreessen famously noted that "software is eating the world." Unfortunately, it's also eating the lunch of most enterprises, including federal agencies.

For all the talk about wasteful government IT spending, little is said about the costs agencies pay to patch buggy software, a consequence of the industry's predisposition to release their wares now and fix them later. For Robert Jack, CIO of the U.S. Marine Corps, those costs aren't incidental..."